


Habitual

by cognomen



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Anal Sex, Complete, First Aid, Injury, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28444140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: It’s not the first time Zenigata’s picked Jigen up out of a bad situation like this. It’s not quite a habit, but Zenigata is the sort of man who prides himself on bringing in his man, and always alive. The rest is for the courts to decide, and Zenigata’s job is to uphold the law. This is the way he sees it as best done.And, he tells himself, with just as much conviction as he does every time this happens. Lupin will come back for him. So really, it’s like setting a trap!The fact that the trap never works and usually springs closed on Zenigata instead of Lupin isn’t worth considering for very long. Especially not with Jigen bleeding on the pavement and enemies closing in behind. Zenigata scoops him up, and wonders if the ICPO will let him write off another shirt.
Relationships: Jigen Daisuke/Zenigata Kouichi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42
Collections: Lupin the Nerd Secret Santa 2020





	Habitual

It’s not the first time Zenigata’s picked Jigen up out of a bad situation like this. It’s not quite a habit, but Zenigata is the sort of man who prides himself on bringing in his man, and _always_ alive. The rest is for the courts to decide, and Zenigata’s job is to uphold the law. This is the way he sees it as best done. 

_And,_ he tells himself, with just as much conviction as he does every time this happens. _Lupin will come back for him. So really, it’s like setting a trap!_

The fact that the trap never works and usually springs closed on Zenigata instead of Lupin isn’t worth considering for very long. Especially not with Jigen bleeding on the pavement and enemies closing in behind. Zenigata scoops him up, and wonders if the ICPO will let him write off another shirt.

“How come it’s always you?” Jigen wonders, half delirious. He’s all legs, and even though Zenigata’s not a short man, the gangly figure is hard to juggle into something it’s easy to carry. He has to practically fold Jigen in half, and he knows it can’t be comfortable for someone shot through.

“I could ask you the same question,” Zenigata answers. “Come on, we better get you out of here. I’m not the only one looking for you.”

In the grand scheme of things, when you pull as many heists as Lupin’s gang does, there are bound to be some that go spectacularly wrong. Especially with the amount of daring and recklessness that Lupin builds into all his plans. It’s just a given that sometimes, things wind up like this. 

“Lupin’ll be back,” Jigen grunts, as Zenigata loads him into the back of his rental car, folding his ridiculously long legs at the knees so he can close the door. 

“Yes, but not for a while. Hospital or no hospital?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“You can hardly move. Lost a lot of blood,” Zenigata points out. 

“No hospital. Can’t trust ‘em, here.”

He’s not wrong, but that means this is Zenigata’s problem to take care of from front to back. He sighs and closes the door. “No hospital.”

-

It means two weeks with Jigen on the couch of his rental flat, and Zenigata trying to calm the landlady when she swears she smells someone smoking up there, and half-freezing with the windows wide open to air the worst of the tobacco smoke out. But first, it means he has to clean the wound out, sew it closed. He rolls his sleeves up, and Jigen lifts his destroyed shirt on the half-assed nest of newspapers Zenigata’s crumpled up under him to keep blood off the furniture and floor (it’s effective enough, and he knows how persistent blood is). 

“I feel like a kid’s craft project,” Jigen says, as Zenigata rinses the wound first with water, then antiseptic that makes Jigen wince.

“Hopefully you won’t look like one when I’m done stitching,” Zenigata grumbles back. It’s not the worst wound he’s ever seen, but through and through and enough of a bleeder that he’s not surprised Jigen is faint. By this point probably the only thing that’s keeping him conscious is that, as he would say, he’s used to it. 

“Haven’t you gotten any better at sewing straight lines by now?” 

“It’s not like I do this for anyone else,” Zenigata threads the needle, black sewing thread, two strands. He’s gotten pretty good at working the thread through the eye of the needle by now, and learned that it’s easiest to see what he’s doing with black thread. It’s been a process. This time it goes relatively quick, though Jigen winces every time Zenigata makes a new stitch. 

“Remember when you tried to fish the bullet out?” Jigen asks, voice strained but still sounding amused. 

“How was I supposed to know that’s just in movies,” Zenigata grumbles back, focusing. The bleeding is slowing, now, but his fingers keep getting slippery on the needle. He stops to wipe his hands.

“Jeez. You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“I know first aid,” Zenigata points out. “Now, a little more. Thanks to you. But it’s not like this was part of training.”

He pulls the last stitch tight, and knots it like the others. He pours some water from a bottle over the injury to get a better look, and he can see that the torn skin is pulled tight together, and should heal. “Alright, over.”

“Other side already? You are getting faster at this,” Jigen grumbles, but he shifts over in a crinkling of newspaper, revealing that the ink has stained his back where he’s bled on it, and Zenigata jams down a few fresh layers under his front quickly so he won’t mess up the half he just finished. 

“That’s your fault, too,” Zenigata reminds. 

This is just as fast, the stitch practiced. The needle always feels very small in Zenigata’s hands, and his fingers ache from pulling the fiddly knots tight after he finishes, but it’s a job well done and he can be satisfied. He sighs, cleans this side too, and then puts a big, self-stick plaster over each side when Jigen sits up. It doesn’t look like hardly anything, now that it’s all cleaned out and covered. Zenigata crumples up all the newspaper and his ruined shirt into a big ball and crams all of it into a garbage bag.

“Whoever rents this place after you is gonna have some explaining to do if they ever need to investigate in here,” Jigen grabs for his suit jacket before Zenigata can take it away, and pulls his cigarettes out of the inside pocket, lights one, takes a deep inhale.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Zenigata protests.

“ _You_ can’t smoke in here, it’s _your_ deposit.” Jigen throws back, mimicking a petulant child with his tone. “Whaddaya gonna do, arrest me? I assume I’m already more or less in custody. If you say I can’t smoke at all, it’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Zenigata rolls his eyes, shoos Jigen over to a window and then opens it so he can let the smoke escape before it settles, and finishes cleaning up. Before he’s done, he feels guilty about the cold air, and brings Jigen a blanket, sighing in exhaustion as he sits down on the couch. “You think Lupin’s alright?”

“Lupin’s always fine,” Jigen rolls one dark brown eye toward Zenigata, under the heavy fringe of his bangs, now hanging a little lanker than usual from a long day. “Maybe it’ll take a while before he gets back, but he’d have come back for me.”

“I know.” Zenigata knows more than one truth about Lupin, and that’s one of them; he’ll always come back for his people. Zenigata has counted himself amongst those from time to time. Still, sometimes the waiting party found themselves in a tricky situation. He knows Jigen would endure on faith alone, but he does his best to be sure the man doesn’t have to.

-

Jigen sleeps, eats, smokes and little else for the first two days afterwards; he looks pale and a little unsteady, but his wounds stay clean so it’s just the process of his body putting all it’s resources to healing. By the third day, he’s mostly eating, packing calories into his lean frame as if he was trying to put on winter weight.

“Slow down, you’ll get sick from going too fast,” Zenigata tries to moderate—a little. 

“Nah,” Jigen finishes the last slice of last night’s pizza. “I need the resources. Besides, you know better. This is how it always is.”

 _How it always is_ , which implies a lot. _Like why I brought him back here to my place to heal up instead of jail._ There’s a flash of guilt and Zenigata stares into his coffee cup, trying to evaluate his instincts. As always, he’s not quite sure what’s at the bottom of it. A lack of trust that other officers would take Jigen’s health as seriously as he does, or the worry that putting Jigen someplace easy to access (for Lupin, that is) means he’ll miss out on a chance to capture the man, once and for all. 

“What’s the matter, Pops? All of a sudden, your face dropped.” Jigen licks his fingers noisily, then wipes them on one of the brown paper pizza place napkins. He’s still got his eyes on the fridge, like he’s going to dive back in and see what else he can find to eat. 

“It’s a tricky situation, that’s all,” Zenigata admits. “You want something hot to eat? Feel up to a walk?”

“I thought I’d be under house arrest,” Jigen teases back, but he nods. “Let me freshen up a little. I got three days of grit under my nails.”

He has worse than that, but Zenigata nods. “Let me know if anything looks funny when you take the bandages off.”

“Your face looks funny with them on, should I tell you that?” Jigen waves off the concern with his usual jokes, but he knows the drill. He’s been injured enough, and had the injuries turn sour enough times that Zenigata knows he’s practically a nurse himself. It says a lot about human resilience, all the things Jigen’s been through and survived, upright and walking and talking. 

-

The first time this had happened, Zenigata kept Jigen in handcuffs the entire time, only to find out come right at the end (before he made his daring-yet-expected escape with Lupin, dressed in a maid outfit) that he could have slipped them at any time. He’d used the cuffs as an excuse to make Zenigata’s life way more difficult, claiming he couldn’t pee with them on, that he had a condition that meant he had to eat with one hand free or he’d waste all his calories moving both his arms, that sort of thing.

The next time, Zenigata hadn’t bothered, and Jigen had grinned knowingly when he saw Zenigata considering it, and making up his mind.

By now, it’s amicable. Probably better than that. Once Jigen’s been exercised (‘we gotta go on a walk, like a dog, or I’ll start peeing in the corners’) and fed, which Zenigata also feels is a little doglike, at least with Jigen’s table manners—they settle back in, and Jigen smokes until Zenigata is sure he can forget about leaving on good terms with the land-lady. Whenever she smells it, she starts tapping on the ceiling with the end of her broom handle, now.

“We gonna talk about last time?” Jigen finally asks. 

_Last time?_ It should probably spring to mind immediately but Zenigata goes through a lot. Last time probably means ‘the last time this happened’, and then it finally drags up like a ship’s anchor. _Last time._

“Uh,” Zenigata says, eloquently. He can feel his cheeks heating up, and he instinctively starts rubbing at the back of his neck, like he could bleed the excess temperature from there. “Is there anything to talk about?”

Jigen gives him a long, slowly moving expression that’s not quite incredulous. It’s hard to tell since the man’s eyes are usually impossible to see, but Zenigata’s pretty good at reading him. He’s spent a _lot_ of time looking. Studying behaviors. “That’s not really a nice thing to say, Pops.”

“That’s, uh, that’s not what I meant,” Zenigata says. It’s tricky stuff to negotiate; he’s never enjoyed doing it. He doesn’t have a lot of relationships— _any_ relationships—that aren’t immediately limited or predicated on the fast-paced life he has. He never gets to spend very long in one place, because Lupin doesn’t. So much of what he does is contingent on keeping up. But, this doesn’t really count as a relationship, does it? Jigen stands waiting, or rather slouches in place, the angle of his head indicating he’s probably looking at Zenigata. Patient.

“Well, is there some part of it we _should_ talk about? Like uh, was it bad? Maybe I should apologize?” 

Jigen laughs at him, not quite a full-on guffaw. “Apologize? Pops, I was hoping we could try it again.”

_Oh._

“That okay?” Jigen presses, reaching up to lift the brim of his hat just a little with his index finger pointed like a gun to tip it back just enough to give Zenigata a glimpse of his eyes as he takes the lead.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Zenigata says, as Jigen pushes his suit coat off his shoulders.

“You didn’t last time,” Jigen picks Zenigata’s hat up off his head and drops it onto the floor or—coffee table or whatever it is behind them. Zenigata doesn't bother to look and see.

“Last time you were, uh, less shot.”

“Yeah, but I was _more_ stabbed. This isn’t so bad. You can be gentle.” He says it casually, but it surprises Zenigata.

“I’m always—”

“Yeah, that’s my point,” Jigen laughs a little—maybe it sounds faintly embarrassed. “It won’t be an issue Pops. I can handle it.”

“But if anything hurts…”

“Nah,” Jigen says. “We don’t need that. I trust you. You trust me. As fucked up as all that is. Just let me set the pace, and we’ll be fine. After all, you spent all that time stitching me up. I don’t wanna mess that up any more than you do.”

Zenigata never really guessed this might become a habitual thing, not between the two of them. Yet there is a gravity there between them he feels pulling whenever he’s spent enough time alone with Jigen.

“Where do you want me?” he asks, unsure, but Jigen said 'trust’ and if there’s one thing Zenigata is comically good at it’s that. Trusting that—lupin knows what he’s doing when he picks his comrades, trusting that Zenigata knows both Lupin and his gang well enough that he can usually pick out when he’s being tricked. Trusting that things will be alright, one way or another, when Jigen walks all over him—because Zenigata likes being taken for granted and treated as reliable.

Enough people see only the feverish dedication to catching Lupin and dismiss it as incompetence or single-minded fanaticism. Maybe it’s both those things, but at heart it’s dedication to a cause. Jigen looks at Zenigata like he understands, and maybe he’s the only one that does. 

“Lay back on the couch,” Jigen says with casual promise. “I gotta find something slick.”

“I, uh,” Zenigata feels himself go pink from the tips of his toes to his ears. “In the first-aid kit. Hang on.”

Jigen only laughs until he realizes Zenigata is serious. Then he follows him into the kitchen to pull the first aid kit down from on top of the fridge. It’s the one thing he usually remembers to lug from place-to-place, small enough to go in his suitcase. He produces the bottle he’d stammered his way through buying at the pharmacy last time, when it became evident he was going to need it. 

“You take this everywhere now?” Jigen takes the bottle from Zenigata. “Even when you have to check the bag?”

“It’s a perfectly normal thing to carry,” Zenigata defends. “Just like it was normal to buy, I’d just rather not have to again.” 

“Huh.” Jigen accepts that answer thoughtfully and with the bottle of lube in his hand, gestures Zenigata back to the front of the flat with a casual enticement that reassures Zenigata he hasn’t ruined the mood. _Then again if it didn’t ruin it when I had to walk ten minutes to the drug store and get it in the first place,_ with both of them half wound up from fooling around before that… _Well, evidence suggest a thirty second detour to the kitchen won’t be the end of the world._

“Lay down, get comfortable,” Jigen instructs. “Don’t worry for like twenty minutes. It’s my turn to take care of you.”

Zenigata’s protest about how unnecessary that is dies on his lips when Jigen works his narrow hips out of his own paints with a faint shimmy. The shirt is next to go but the hat is such a fixture that Jigen usually forgets it. Jigen looks only a little more vulnerable without it, so Zenigata sheds his own shirt and pants and lays back on the couch he reaches up and just angles it back on Jigen’s head, as Jigen settles over him. With his shirt off, the line of stitches offset over his belly stands out, but it’s healing well. Zenigata spreads a hand protectively over the injury on instinct. 

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve done a fine job as usual. The stitches will hold.”

“That’s not—” Zenigata shifts his hand up to brush his thumb over another scar, just under Jigen’s ribs, and then palms down to one low on his belly; a smaller nick but it had bled intensely. Jigen _had_ needed to go to the hospital for that one. His eyes follow his hand over Jigen’s body, to his hardening cock. “That’s not it. It’s just that it seems to happen so often.” 

“Don’t get all mushy on me,’ Jigen settles so his knees are on either side of Zenigata’s hips. “This is just the life we lead. You’ve got more than a couple permanent marks yourself, and I’m not talking about your belly-button.”

Zenigata actually chuckles, and he doesn’t expect it. Jigen has pretty unique way of looking at things, honestly. He gets his hand over Zenigata’s then and guides it to his cock. Dutifully, attentively, Zenigata gives it a long stroke and Jigen pushes into his fist, rocking his ass over Zenigata’s crotch in a deeply suggestive way. If he wasn’t hard before it doesn’t take much of this before he is, his free hand settling at Jigen’s hip and feeling the rhythmic surges as he rolls his hips.

Jigen is a sight like this, rocking into Zenigata’s fist to set the pace, eyes fixed on Zenigata through the fringe of his bangs. It reminds Zenigata that it’s just the two of them here and for once he should try not to think about everything all at once. He focuses in and Jigen reaches back to work his hand into the open fly of Zenigata’s boxers, curling his calloused fingers around Zenigata’s straining cock and stroking it hard enough to stand tall out of the fly of his boxers. 

Jigen looks back over his shoulder and grins. “Don’t tell Lupin this but your dick is my favorite.” 

“ _What?_ ” it seems so nonsensical that Zenigata is still trying to pick it apart—when on earth would he have time (or occasion) to tell Lupin about—any of this? Why would he want to?

Jigen laughs at him and he has the bottle of lube in his hands from somewhere, but he stops for a genuine guffaw. 

“Because he’d be jealous, Pops. He gets real predictable when he thinks he might want something he’s not getting.” 

Experience with Fujiko tells Zenigata that he’s probably right, but he’s never considered making it personal before. And—it doesn’t seem right to. _Does he mean jealous of me or of himself?_

Any further consideration of that question will have to wait. Jigen slicks Zenigata’s cock up with a few rough strokes and then shifts up on his knees. “You ready?”

Zenigata’s not sure he ever is, but with Jigen looking at him intently with a lazy, lusty smile hung crooked on his mouth, Zenigata isn't about to say no. He gets both his hands on Jigen’s hips and steadies him. It’s a practiced motion—Jigen with one hand curled around the base of Zenigata’s slicked up cock, shifts up on his knees, and then eases back down, pressing the head of Zenigata’s cock against his entrance. It doesn’t amaze Zenigata that Jigen doesn't’ warm up for this anymore. 

“Yeah,” Zenigata grunts belatedly, watching Jigen work, feeling the first press of resistance before Jigen rocks a little and _pushes_ a slow give that turns into what feels like a sudden plunge and Zenigata make a noise he’s helpless to stop as Jigen catches himself just after the head and they both take a minute, very very still. Zenigata slowly un-grits his teeth and rubs his thumbs over the prominent points of Jigen’s hipbones, and they both breathe.

Jigen’s hand takes one of Zenigata’s, still a little slick from the lube and guides it back to his cock. “Help me out? You got a big dick. Stings a little ‘till we get going.”

“I got you,” Zenigata strokes Jigen's cock obediently, one long slow stroke as Jigen sinks a little lower on shaking haunches, taking Zenigata a little deeper still. The slow slide continues as they both focus. It’s tight, slow—Zenigata can feel the strain over the widest part of his cock, the way Jigen has to take a moment and let his body stretch, thighs trembling a little as he holds himself up.

Reaching around with his free hand, Zenigata strokes two fingers gently, soothingly against Jigen’s stretched hole, easing a little more slick lube there, though his cock is already dripping with it. “You alright?”

“Mm-hmm,” Jigen says, a little dreamily. And for the first time, Zenigata realizes that Jigen’s not taking his time because because he’s past his ability, or trying to get used to how big Zenigata is, but because he _likes_ that feeling of being stretched to capacity, and he’s trying to feel it for as long as possible, before gravity and the relaxation of his body do the rest.

“Jeez,” Zenigata breathes, realizing. He strokes Jigen’s cock slow, and after a few repeats, Jigen starts to ease down further, rocking his hips to take a little more—a little more—each second.

“Good huh?” Jigen asks, finally getting all the way down to rest on Zenigata’s lap. 

“Yeah,” Zenigata curves his hand over Jigen’s ass as they both take a moment to breathe. Jigen’s body is gripping him tight, and Zenigata can feel every small movement, the slight way Jigen’s body shifts as he breathes. It feels surprisingly close— _well,_ he thinks wryly to himself, _it’d be hard to be any closer._

He puts his hand gently over Jigen’s side, until Jigen finally looks up at him through the unruly fringe of his hair. “Why are you always so soft with me, huh?”

Jigen moves then, lifting himself nearly all the way up on his knees before rocking back down and any thoughts Zenigata had in regards to an answer all immediately scatter. He makes an inarticulate and indelicate noise as answer, remembering his grip on Jigen’s cock to stroke him in time with his thrusts.

“Nevermind,” Jigen says, breathless, as he drives the pace faster. “I don’t want an answer right now anyway.”

It’s relentless, the pace Jigen always drives for, enough so neither can really catch their breath and the grip-and-slide of Jigen’s body over Zenigata’s cock is is so distracting, it always pulls him right in. Maybe some day he’ll work up the resolve to ask for something slower, but for now Jigen knows what he wants, and he's’ the one in control of taking it. Anyone who thought that being on the receiving end was inherently giving up being in charge had never met Jigen. 

Release crawls down Zenigata’s spine and up his thighs, leaving him sweaty and straining for it before it joins up in his middle. He has to ride it out and hold on, but Jigen pushes down on him _hard_ , gasping, and his body squeezes through his release just as Zenigata lets go, his eyes squinting closed as the sensation of hot jizz pooling on his sternum and against the palm of his hand finally registers. 

It leaves him floating, body pulsing through the last of the aftershocks as his hands wander absently over Jigen’s narrow thighs and spread hips, the patch of hair over his cock that reaches one dark line upward toward his navel, like it, too, is giving the middle finger to the world. His mind feels quiet, but Zenigata at least manages to remember the question, belatedly, when he’s heart rate slows and his cock has softened enough to slip free. Jigen eases down against him—he won’t stay long. He never does—his instinct run opposite to Zenigata’s after sex. He gets fidgety and active in the aftermath, while Zenigata just wants to sleep.

“I’m soft with you because—”

“Oh jeez, here it comes,” Jigen pats Zenigata’s chest, with a squish and a splash. “You always get sappy and philosophical. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“ _Because_ ,” Zenigata repeats, insistent. “The world’s so hard on you. That’s all.”

“Ugh,” Jigen grunts, as if repulsed by so soft a concept. But, for once, instead of staggering off with the blankets wrapped around his hips to have a cigarette, he settles down to stay at least long enough for Zenigata to doze off.

-

End. 


End file.
